The Cunning Ones
by beestriped
Summary: A series of oneshots centered on a collection of Slytherins during life after the War. Because, really they were all just kids. So here's one for them
1. Young and Beautiful

_Will you still love me when I'm no longer young and beautiful? Will you still love me when I've got nothing but my aching soul? Lana Del Rey, Young and Beautiful_

Pansy drank a great deal of wine. Her family's cellar was stocked full with it; for all of her parents' sins, they had never touched liquor. It was dirty. It was primitive.

Pansy had no such qualms.

Her parents couldn't scold her now anyways, wasn't death the ultimate silencer? They had died in the war, clever enough to side with the strong, not clever enough to survive. They left their estate to their only child, the sole heir to the Parkinson name.

The Mansion was a respectable size, as was their Gringotts vault. Enough money to support a lone witch hell bent on drinking every drop of wine in the cellar.

So Pansy Parkinson, the social butterfly of Slytherin House spent her days; slinking through the Parkinson mansion in her long sheer robe with the ever present glass of wine in her hand.

Maybe people thought she had lost it, shuttered up on her family's ancestral grounds, all but a hermit. They wouldn't be totally wrong.

Pansy was a creature of darkness and the night in all of its beauty; a lover of sin and transgressions. Those things entranced her. After The Dark Lord's defeat, her world had been cruelly exposed to blinding light. There had been no corner or crevice to hide in.

And like a proverbial snake, hadn't she shied away from it like the cold-blooded creature she was?

Others had learnt to embrace the new world and the light that came with it. Blaise Zabini had made a fortune helping to rebuild the Wizarding World, restoring all the damage and destruction. Even Draco Malfoy, the Slytherin Prince, had learned to adapt.

He was doing quite well, engaged to Astoria Greengrass now. Not that that meant anything to her, _she _didn't feel forgotten or betrayed, Pansy was just fine when she received the news. It was only Draco Malfoy, the only person she could truly trust to stand by the old ways. Her heart wasn't _rotting_ inside of her, and if it was, then any pain had long since been dulled.

Everyone else had moved on to embrace the world that Harry Potter, the Fucking Boy Who Lived, had made possible.

Not Pansy. The light was merciless, leaving no shadows for Pansy to wrap herself in. It exposed everything.

The new world said that the old ways were wrong, outdated and ludicrous. Tradition and ceremony were tossed out carelessly like broken toys that had been outgrown.

All the things that had lifted her up during her school days now tore her down. All that had made her bright and special now ceased to exist. Pansy felt like nothing.

She had never been beautiful, Pansy knew this, but the Parkinson name carried more weight than some and that had given Pansy something to cling to; to build upon. It stood for tradition and a vault full of gold, these things lifted her up.

She had been popular, in her own charming, terrible way. There was a kind of power that she wielded then. When she spoke, girls had listened, the things she said carried weight. When she had stood up before the Battle of Hogwarts to expose Potter, had not the Great Hall turned to her?

Now, no one called on her. At first there had been a pathetic handful of letters but then her solitude had been self-imposed. When she finally emerged she found that no one had waited for Pansy Parkinson in the changing world. She had been forsaken and left to wither in nostalgia. The pedestal she had built during those seven years at Hogwarts had come tumbling down and she was left with dust and ashes.

But that had been nothing compared to the feeling that overcame her when she had looked to the newspaper and seen photos of Draco Malfoy, _her_ Draco, with little Astoria Greengrass. _Together._

All those years at Hogwarts with him had fallen to the wayside. Maybe she had lost him when the Dark Mark appeared on his arm when they were sixteen; maybe not. Perhaps Astoria Greengrass had replaced Pansy; but hadn't he known that he had been her entire world? Theirs was young love, first love, everything new and exciting and oh-so grown up. But then, they had all grown up too fast.

Hadn't Draco known that he had been the shooting star that illuminated her otherwise plain life? Hadn't they been perfect together? He had been her whole world. Maybe he had forgotten. Or maybe it had never meant that much to him.

She didn't know which was worse.

It tormented her really. Her whole being seemed to strain to go back in time; to delve into the past and discover where their paths had started to separate.

But she couldn't.

So she sat alone in her vast house with her wine glasses and tortured herself with questions until eventually she became too numb to even recognize the sharp pain of heartbreak. Or anything else for that matter.

Sometimes Pansy wondered if that was the reason she had locked herself away. She wasn't sure if she could bear to casually run into him on Diagon Alley. Pansy knew she was a coward; but then Slytherins weren't known for their bravery.

She thought that facing the actual reality of his indifference would be unbearable.

Pansy had at least thought that Draco would be as unchangeable as she was; that their natures were reflections of each other, they were so similar. Two halves in a whole.

But she had forgotten how Slytherin he was. Slytherins adapted, putting all their cunning and ingenuity to the sole task of surviving before rising to the top; self-preservation was the highest rule. And he had always been the most Slytherin of them all. Pansy had realized all of this and loved him more as she began to despise him.

In her stiff defiance of the new world full of change that was emerging around her, Pansy kept everything the same.

But no one cared.

What a sick joke.


	2. Chandelier

_I'm gonna fly like a bird through the night, feel my tears as they dry. I'm gonna swing from the chandelier, from the chandelier. – SIA, Chandelier_

She had been a late bloomer. This had come as quite the shock to everyone.

Everyone had been so busy worrying about death and destruction to notice that Millicent Bulstrode had become a knockout.

Millicent always tried to shrug off the sting that the looks of surprise brought in their wake.

Such was the price of beauty she supposed.

Men looked at her all the time now, and for reasons that weren't even remotely related to pity.

But there had been one, once, that had looked at her that way before she had blossomed

He had died in the war. But when he was alive, he had thought she was beautiful, magnificent; and when the night bled into morning Millicent wondered if somewhere he still did.

Neither of them had been remarkable, maybe that's what drew them together. Both placed in Slytherin the same year that Harry Potter arrived at Hogwarts. Not that either of them particularly cared about Potter and his squad of Gryffindors.

It was fifth year when he stole a kiss from her in a dim hall. They kept it a secret because Millicent knew she couldn't bear the merciless teasing she would have to endure if Pansy found out.

Back then it was generally thought to be amusing to make fun of stupid, ugly, useless Millicent Bulstrode.

_He _hadn't. He had even defended her, which had made her knees weak and her stupid, ugly, useless heart flutter.

They had made plans to be married; sometimes she laughed cynically at their childish plans and other times she cried. It had certainly felt like forever in his arms, like finally she had found her place.

But all of that had fallen apart after the Battle of Hogwarts, of course. She didn't know how it happened and she knew she'd never find out why.

She only knew that the headstone bearing the name **Vincent T. Crabbe** had been the worst things she had ever laid eyes on.

For over a year if felt like a dream, always the faint undeniable feeling that he would walk through her flat door with his stupid grin plastered all over his face. But then she saw everyone slowly turning to the new world around them and realized she had to do the same.

She worked at the Ministry, brought home a good deal of Galleons, and most nights she went to pubs to let strange men buy her drinks before taking them home. They brought relief, whether they were wizards or Muggles (did it really even matter anymore?), and a comforting monotony. Millicent Bulstrode was wanted and desired and she made those men jump through hoops before taking them to bed.

Millicent liked the way things were run now. She didn't have to feel ashamed of her Muggle mother and it was okay to openly loathe her no-good Pureblood father and his other family. She knew that Pansy had shut herself up in that ugly old house and Blaise was making loads of Galleons; Daphne Greengrass was still hung up over Theodore Nott and Draco Malfoy was sulking in his parents' sprawling manner.

Once she had met up with Greg Goyle. It was three years after the Drak Lord's defeat. They had gone to the Leaky Cauldron and Millicent had struggled to get her food down while trying to stamp out the feelings that seeing Greg's face brought. They carefully skirted around the topic of Vincent; Greg never saw Draco anymore but he worked at the Ministry now and was dating some irrelevant Hufflepuff girl two years their junior.

Afterwards they both stood and hugged, it seemed like the thing to do, and there was a brief flicker of static electricity between them.

They went to his house but Millicent added Greg Goyle to the notches in her bedpost.

It seemed logical. Here they were; the two people who loved Vincent the most and were loved by him in return. Maybe it mattered that they were dragon-snaking between his sheets but Vincent was dead so she figured that it didn't.

She left while he was sleeping; snoring in a manner so similar to Vincent's that it made her lonely heart ache.

Her expensive flat always seemed foreign; she was hardly ever there anyways. But there was a bottle of Firewhiskey in the pantry and if that didn't make a house a home then she didn't know what did.

The graveyard was silent at dawn but then Millicent supposed that the dead didn't make much noise any time of day.

The grass was wet with dew so she cast a discreet Drying charm before sitting down and leaning heavily on Vincent's tombstone. Taking swigs of the Firewhiskey she leaned her head back on the cool marble.

As the sun burned the sky with yellows and oranges and pinks, Millicent wondered what life would be like if the Dark Lord had won the War. Maybe Vincent would be sitting in her flat in that other world instead of laying six feet under her.

That was why Millicent really hated Harry Fucking Potter sometimes.

But then Vincent always had been recklessly ambitious, it probably would have only been a matter of time before he was on the wrong end of an Unforgiveable Curse. It probably would have been a matter of time for all of them really.

Millicent really hated deep thoughts like this; they stirred up things that had gone to rest, making them rankle inside of her.

But that's what the Firewhiskey was for she supposed.

** Let me know what you guys think about this story so far. Thanks for reading, please feel free to leave a review with suggestions or your thoughts!


	3. House of the Rising Sun

_Oh, Mother tell my baby sister not to do what I have done. – Lauren O' Connell, House of the Rising Sun_

It wasn't fucking fair.

Daphne lived alone in her sweeping glamorous flat, she drank champagne and wore expensive shoes and her hair always looked lovely.

But Astoria was the one getting married. She had always been the lucky one, too young to understand when Hogwarts had turned on itself during Daphne's seventh year. Astoria was the one who flitted happily about Europe while Daphne was left to deal with the shattered post-war world.

It was the duty of the firstborn. To take care of the family and add prestige onto the already notable Greengrass name. And despite her many shortcomings Daphne knew she was responsible, responsible enough to handle that.

Responsible for her parents, those two fools. Astoria adored their mother and father but Daphne looked down her aristocratic nose at them. Her mother was content to toddle around Greengrass Hall and attend to her housewifely duties.

Once upon a time, Daphne wanted that life, wanted a husband and children and just to be happy.

But then the war had crashed through those daydreams, leaving Daphne to see how silly she had been in the harsh light of reality. The rude awakening had made everything incredibly simple for everyone though.

No one asked what you were going to do after Hogwarts, or what you wanted to get on your N.E.W.T.s, those questions were ridiculous when you thought about the people that were dying and fighting all around you. But after that, when it was time to start rebuilding, Daphne found herself lost. She was too old to stay safe and undecided in Hogwarts but what the fuck was she supposed to do out there in the real world.

Before the war they had been at the top of the food chain, floating in a glittering bubble of safety. They were safe. And then no one was safe, Daphne felt like she had been robbed of her innocence, hadn't they all had everything snatched away?

She knew she was bitter and hated it

She consoled herself that she had remained relatively normal. Pansy had shut herself up in her drafty mansion and rumor had it that Millicent Bulstrode was trying to sleep her way around the Ministry. At least she wasn't doing _that_ badly.

And really her life wasn't that awful. Sure, sometimes she couldn't sleep because of soul-crushing anxiety about her future but Daphne could live with that. Her flat was luxurious and everyone always told her that she looked beautiful when she went out.

She went out alone mostly (but no one had to know that).

Her mother fretted that she was getting too skinny but Daphne couldn't really bring herself to care. Maybe she would become light enough to just float away.

Most of the time Daphne just wished that she had _someone_.

At school she and Pansy had been almost inseparable (sure Pansy had been a huge bitch, but wasn't every girl at Hogwarts?). Slytherin House was a tight knit one, something that took most people by surprise, there was always people to count on, like a kind of family (the rest of the school had hated them so its not like there had been options). That was something that the war had stolen from her, all of her housemates had scattered like leaves in the October wind.

Fuck the loneliness; she was too young for this.

Most days she was bored out of her mind, so she went to parties (even after the Second War people still thought there was something to celebrate) and lost herself in the glittering crowds. She would dance with handsome strangers, flirting with them until the early morning but she took a small amount of cruel pride in disappointing them.

Eventually she went to enough parties that her mother put her in charge of throwing one at Greengrass Hall, Daphne suspected that it was a ploy in order to spend time together but did it anyways.

The party had been a huge success and then her mother fluttering, useless friends had all begged her to plan their parties.

During these parties it wouldn't be unusual for Daphne to see Blaise or Draco or even Millicent, but there was one person whom she really hated seeing.

Theodore Nott had a certain talent for flustering Daphne who prided herself on being rather collected. They had dated, on and off during their time at Hogwarts but Theodore had a quiet fascination with Dark magic that repulsed Daphne even as it drew her in. She kept Theodore's secret (didn't want that news getting out to all the new zealous Aurors) and kept her distance. It was all for the best and Theodore didn't seem to care that much anyways (his apathy used to kill her).

It embarrassed her that she still had a weak spot for an old flame so she tried her best to shove those feelings into the deep recesses of her heart where she could try to forget about them.

It was rare that she even ran into him, thank Merlin.

So Daphne pretended that she wasn't jealous of Astoria and that she wasn't still in love with Theodore Nott and that she didn't miss her best friend. She planned parties and galas and charity balls, glittering events all of them.

She had managed to survive, but she was so lonely.


End file.
